4/17


I would say right now I am most familiar with WLC. It’s pretty much what you do when you are in the process of writing a dissertation. However, it was not always like this.

Before I came to the US, I did a lot of WLL. I used to go to the Language Center in my university in Spain. The language center felt more like a library, but you could write an essay, leave it in a mail box, and the language specialist would put it back in a different mail box with all the mistakes corrected. You never talked to the person who corrected your essay though. So I guess it was a very interesting version of a Writing Center? At that time, however, I found it fascinating J In addition, I would also facebooked a friend in Russia on a weekly basis and we would just write long letters to each other for the sake of practicing English. All this contributed to my WLL, and it all took place in Spain.

Then, when I came to the States and started to take university courses, everything shifted to a LW perspective. However, I still felt that I had to do a lot of WLL on my own. Even though Ortega suggests tasks in which LWC, LW and WLL go hand-by-hand, I also think that this needs a lot of training and a lot of understanding on how to guide and scaffold students. The very first time I came to the States for an exchange program (just one semester), I found myself immersed in a class with Senior Sociology majors. I had to write a research paper for that class, and I had no idea of the conventions, the language, the format, or even what Sociology meant! I visited her many times in her office hours, but our meetings were not any helpful at all. I would go to the WC as well, but of course they could not do the assignment with me. I was desperate. In the end I was just lucky to meet a really good American friend who walk me through the whole process. I would say this was just my most painful experience in writing a paper for a course.

So yes, I agree with Ortega that we should always look for a combination of the three approaches. However, it is essential to always take into consideration the abilities of the student, and always provide the scaffolding they may need to write this kind of challenging papers. Getting to the level of being able to WLC in an L2 it's a really long process that takes a lot of learning and a lot of patience. 

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